Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Horse Guards   Listen
noun
Horse Guards  n.  (Mil.) A body of cavalry so called; esp., a British regiment, called the Royal Horse Guards, which furnishes guards of state for the sovereign.
The Horse Guards, a name given to the former headquarters of the commander in chief of the British army, at Whitehall in London.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Horse Guards" Quotes from Famous Books



... passage broken in the wall of the Banqueting Hall, or more probably through one of the windows dismantled for the purpose, Charles emerged on the scaffold, in the open street, fronting the site of the present Horse Guards. The scaffold was hung with black, and carpeted with black, the block and the axe in the middle; a number of persons already stood upon it, among whom were several men with black masks concealing their faces; in the street in front, all round the scaffold, were companies of foot ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... a similar causeway across the Langmoor Rhine: but the guide, in the fog, missed his way. There was some delay and some tumult before the error could be rectified. At length the passage was effected: but, in the confusion, a pistol went off. Some men of the Horse Guards, who were on watch, heard the report, and perceived that a great multitude was advancing through the mist. They fired their carbines, and galloped off in different directions to give the alarm. Some hastened to Weston Zoyland, where the cavalry lay. One trooper spurred to the encampment ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... thought, could be but small—though somewhere he knew there was London where the Queen lived, and in London were Buckingham Palace and St. James Palace and Kensington and the Tower, where heads had been chopped off; and the Horse Guards, where splendid, plumed soldiers rode forth glittering, with thrilling trumpets sounding as they moved. These last he always remembered, because he had seen them, and once when he had walked in the park with his nurse there had been an excited stir in the Row, and people had crowded about ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... week I spent mingling with the crowds of enlisted men at the Horse Guards Parade, watching the bulletin boards for the appearance of my name which would mean that I was to report at the regimental depot at Hounslow. My first impression of the men with whom I was to live for three years, ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall

... could go into a man's waistcoat pocket, instead of having to be extricated, with due effort, like a respectable watch of size and position, from a fob in the waistband? No! Not if the whipper-snapper were backed by all the Horse Guards that ever were, with the Life Guards to boot. Poor Osborne might have known better than to cast this slur on his father's flesh and blood; for so dear did he hold ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... the policy by which the Horse Guards occasionally saved a Major's commission for a fourth son of a Duke, by which the Crown lost a continent; and the people of the United States gained a place in the family of nations. The voice of history cries aloud to powerful Governments, in the administration ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... publishing in this number lends additional interest to the portraits of their Royal Highnesses at different ages. The accompanying portraits of the Prince represent him in his nursery; as an Oxford undergraduate; in Highland costume; in the uniform of a Colonel of the Royal Horse Guards (Blues); and finally, in an excellent likeness, at ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... by Royal Commissioners, who include representatives of the War Office, Horse Guards, Treasury, and the Hospital itself, through its Governor ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton

... if engrossed on vellum, find very few buyers among colonies and dependencies that have suffered from vain beliefs. But there remains to England always her army. That cannot change except in the matter of uniform and equipment. The officers may write to the papers demanding the heads of the Horse Guards in default of cleaner redress for grievances; the men may break loose across a country town and seriously startle the publicans; but neither officers nor men have it in their composition to mutiny after the continental manner. The English people, when they trouble to think about the army at all, ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... down the steps by the Duke of York's column and through the Horse Guards into Whitehall, seemingly busy with his own thoughts. A sprucely dressed gentleman who was engaged in the exciting and lucrative sport of war profiteering turned color and hastily swerved out towards the Park as he saw the detective crossing the Horse Guards' Parade. He ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... away from, and once was taken in the passage of this very house with an umbrella up and the Major's hat on, giving his name with the door-mat round him as Sir Johnson Jones, K.C.B. in spectacles residing at the Horse Guards. On which occasion he had got into the house not a minute before, through the girl letting him on the mat when he sent in a piece of paper twisted more like one of those spills for lighting candles than a note, offering ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy • Charles Dickens

... sentries at the Horse Guards, oblivious of all beauty, he passed irresolute along the water, making for their usual seat; already, in fancy, he was sitting there, prodding at the gravel, a nervous twittering in his heart, and that eternal question: Dare I speak? asking itself within him. And suddenly he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the antithesis of his friend and fellow-worker,—a rollicking, good-hearted, emotional, lovable Irishman. At the Charterhouse School and at Oxford he shared everything with Addison, asking nothing but love in return. Unlike Addison, he studied but little, and left the university to enter the Horse Guards. He was in turn soldier, captain, poet, playwright, essayist, member of Parliament, manager of a theater, publisher of a newspaper, and twenty other things,—all of which he began joyously and then abandoned, sometimes against ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... mean to let you. There, we've had trouble enough before breakfast. Let's put it aside, and if we can get away go and see the Horse Guards parade, and then listen to the band and see some of the drilling. I want to learn all I can about an officer's duty, so as not to be like a raw recruit when I get my commission, if I ever ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn

... public buildings of Antwerp, and later entered the Allied ranks as a fighter. When the war broke out, Fowler was private secretary to Ambassador Page in London. In November he got a commission in the Royal Horse Guards, known as the "Blues." While the Germans were pressing hard on Antwerp, the German commander, as I have mentioned elsewhere, asked that a diagram of the city of Antwerp, with plans and location of the cathedral, the Hotel de Ville, and the more important works be sent to him in order that ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green

... a joke or to tease him; and, as it seemed funny, the name stuck to him, although his doings were no longer in the least amusing. So it was now. He had been to the university, but left it in his second year, and joined a regiment of horse guards; but he gave that up also, and was now living in the country, doing nothing, finding fault, and feeling discontented with everything. Theodorite was still in bed: so were the other members of the household—Anna Mikhailovna, its mistress; her sister, the widow of a general; and a landscape ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... little attention, and to have been left to the guidance of nature alone. Charles seems to have had Versailles in view when he laid it out from Le Notre's design. A long straight canal was formed in its centre from a square pond which existed at its foot near the Horse Guards. Rows of elm and lime trees were planted on each side of it, an aviary was formed in that place still called the "Bird Cage Walk;" and in the large space between this walk and the canal, and nearest the Abbey, an extensive decoy for wild fowl was constructed, popularly termed "Duck Island," and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... London streets, and proceeded down Regent Street, and thence to St. James's Park, at the entrance of which is a statue of somebody,—I forget whom. On the very spacious gravel-walks, covering several acres, in the rear of the Horse Guards, some soldiers were going through their exercise; and, after looking at them awhile, we strolled through the Park, alongside of a sheet of water, in which various kinds of ducks, geese, and rare species of waterfowl were swimming. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... his house, for the crew that are about him will not have him come to common view again, but keep him obscurely among themselves. He hath this night, it seems, ordered that the Hall (which there is a ball to be in to-night before the King) be guarded, as the Queene-Mother's is, by his Horse Guards; whereas heretofore they were by the Lord Chamberlain or Steward, and their people. But it is feared they will reduce all to the soldiery, and all other places be taken away; and what is worst of all, will alter the present militia, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... Horse Guards' Parade on a dark, rainy night?" he asked; but he never moved his head, he never took his eyes from the forest. "The wet level of ground looks just like a lagoon and the arches a Venice ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... many agreeable parties with the officers of the Horse Guards, who were all men of the world, and some of them of erudition and understanding. I was introduced to Smollett at this time, and was in the coffee-house with him when the news of the Battle of Culloden came, and when London all over was in a perfect uproar of joy. The theatres ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... which has been caused by nothing in particular and for which no one in particular is to blame. The whole organisation of the war machine was incompetent and out of date. The old Duke had sat for a generation at the Horse Guards repressing innovations with an iron hand. There was an extraordinary overlapping of authorities and an almost incredible shifting of responsibilities to and fro. As for such a notion as the creation and the maintenance of a really adequate medical service for the army— in ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... excuse is that they came again and did their best to finish the job in style. But for a time all their world knows that they were openly beaten, whipped, dumb-cowed, shaking, and afraid. The men know it; their officers know it; the Horse Guards know it, and when the next war comes the enemy will know it also. There are two or three regiments of the Line that have a black mark against their names which they will then wipe out; and it will be excessively inconvenient for ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... ingratiate himself with Sir Henry Saville, that before he left the Priory, his host, who had himself served with distinction in the Peninsula, expressed his readiness to send him, on attaining a fit age, to one of the military colleges, promising to use his interest at the Horse Guards to procure a commission for him. These 285 kind intentions, however, were fated not to be carried out. An old wound which Sir Henry had received at Vimiera broke out afresh, occasioning the rupture of a vessel on the lungs, and in the course of a few ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... when he is buttoned into a tunic little removed in design from a strait-waistcoat, or when the freedom of the man has been subordinated to the lick-and-spittle polish of the dummy,—you who glory in tin-casing for your Horse Guards, and would hoot the Guardsman bold enough to affect a woollen muffler,—would have opened your eyes with amazement if you could have sat on the slopes of the Houwater drift with the staff of the New ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... generals, any old fellows who were in authority, and refused to embark for France until they had definite pledges that they would receive demobilization papers without delay. Whitehall, the sacred portals of the War Office, the holy ground of the Horse Guards' Parade, were invaded by bodies of men who had commandeered ambulances and lorries and had made long journeys from their depots. They, too, demanded demobilization. They refused to be drafted out for service to India, Egypt, Archangel, or anywhere. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... remark from a Scotsman. He had come to London on his way to India, and for a few days had time to amuse himself by sight-seeing before his departure. He had been much struck with the appearance of the mounted sentinels at the Horse Guards, Whitehall, and bore them in remembrance during his Eastern sojourn. On his return, after a period of thirty years, on passing the Horse Guards, he looked up to one, and seeing him, as he thought, unchanged as to horse, position, and accoutrements, he exclaimed—"Od, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... the black towers are Westminster Abbey. How do, your Grace? How do? That's the Duke of Norfolk—the stout man in blue upon the swish-tailed mare. Now we are in Whitehall. There's the Treasury on the left, and the Horse Guards, and the Admiralty, where the stone dolphins ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... visitor there, has admired the handsome edifice which generally goes by that name, and which stands so conspicuously confronting the Treasury Chambers. It must be owned that we have but a slip-slop way of christening our public buildings. When a man tells us that he called on a friend at the Horse Guards, or looked in at the Navy Pay, or dropped a ticket at the Woods and Forests, we put up with the accustomed sounds, though they are in themselves, perhaps, indefensible. The 'Board of Commissioners for Regulating Weights and Measures', and the 'Office ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... the Foot Guards (Vol. vii., p. 595.).—In answer to D. N., as to where he can see uniforms of the Foot Guards, 1660 to 1670, I have to refer him to the Orderly-room, Horse Guards, where he will see the costume of the three regiments since they were raised. In Mackinnon's History of the Coldstream Guards, he will find that regiment's dress from the year ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various

... of brown cords in my life!" said the offended captain. After this the conversation fell away, and the two warriors went off to their military occupations at the Horse Guards, where, no doubt, the Commander-in-chief was waiting for them ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... Margaret and St. John include the land bounded on one side by the river; on another by a line running through the Horse Guards and diagonally across St. James's Park to Buckingham Gate; and on the third by an irregular line which crosses Victoria Street to the west of Carlisle Place, and subsequently cuts across the Vauxhall Bridge ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... no! They are quite hardened to it. They get a good deal of that sort of thing, standing sentry at the Horse Guards. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... through the Major, before Sir William himself, who is (as I can say from having seen him with hounds) an accomplished horseman and enthusiastic fox-hunter. From these high authorities the partners obtained letters of introduction to the Horse Guards in England, and to several gentlemen attached to the Court; in one of the letters of introduction, General Eyre said, "that the system was new to him, and valuable for military purposes." On arriving in England, Mr. Rarey made ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... the command of the army was founded on the peculiar circumstances of his dispute with Mr. Canning. "No political opinions would have prevented him," he said, "under ordinary circumstances, from continuing either at the Horse Guards or at the head of the army in the field; but, from the tone and tenor of the communication he had received from his majesty; from the nature of the invitation to join the administration, contained in Mr. ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... be not only convenient but necessary that the Horse Guards and Ordnance should consult together and combine their deliberations, I beg this letter to be understood to apply as well to Lord Raglan as to yourself, and that you would meet and give the answer to the Queen's ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... lances, and each tried to break his opponent's lance or to unhorse him. But in a tournament they engaged with sharp weapons, and the combatants were often wounded, sometimes killed outright. The large open space in St. James's Park, next to the Horse Guards, was at first called the Tiltyard, because of the tilting that went on there when our kings came to ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... fly over the tiles. The chapels of foreign ambassadors, buildings made sacred by the law of nations, are destroyed. The house of the Chief Justice is demolished. The little children of the Prime Minister are taken out of their beds and laid in their night clothes on the table of the Horse Guards, the only safe asylum from the fury of the rabble. The prisons are opened. Highwaymen, housebreakers, murderers, come forth to swell the mob by which they have been set free. Thirty-six fires are blazing at once in London. Then comes the retribution. Count up all the wretches who were shot, who ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the alleys or walks there are benches, where you may rest yourself. When you come through the Horse Guards (which is provided with several passages) into the park, on the right hand is St. James's Palace, or the king's place of residence, one of the meanest public buildings in London. At the lower end, quite at the extremity, is the queen's palace, a handsome ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz

... Whitehall itself and the street between the gatehouses. That half of it that was nearer to the Park held the tennis-court and the cock-pit and the lodgings of the Duke of Monmouth and others nearer Westminster, and the other half the Horse Guards and the barracks: and that nearer the river held, to the south the Stone Gallery, the Privy Garden, the Bowling Green and a great number of lodgings amongst which were those of the King and of his ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... way, complained of the misfortune when I was set down, and desired my coach might be cleaned before my return. While my attendants were employed in this office, I tripped across the Parade to the Horse Guards, and chanced to meet with an acquaintance in the park, who said, he saw by my countenance that I was upon some expedition. I owned his suspicion was just, but, as I had not time to relate particulars, I quickened my pace, and took possession ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... subject. The peas in question were grown on a large scale in Holstein, and their growth had been fostered with the special object of doing good to the British army and navy. The peas were so cheap that there would be a great saving in money,—and it really had seemed to many that the officials of the Horse Guards and the Admiralty had been actuated by some fiendish desire to deprive their men of salutary fresh vegetables, simply because they were of foreign growth. But the officials of the War Office and the Admiralty ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... family affection which was one of the most amiable features of his character. He has described how he had been to see his mother, how she had laughed at his bad jokes, how they went out to tea at Mrs. Millar's, and how in going they were struck with the light and shade through the gateway at the Horse Guards. And he goes on: "I intend to write you such volumes that it will be impossible for me to keep any order or method in what I write; that will come first which is uppermost in my mind, not that which is uppermost ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... soon as I saw you were missing, I wrote to an old friend on the general staff at Dublin, and asked him to write to the Horse Guards. The answer came back that it was known that you had been taken prisoner, and that you were wounded, but not severely. You were commanding the rear face of the square into which your regiment had been thrown, when your horse, ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... breakfast went with Henry and my father to Cox and Greenwood's, the great army agents, to pay for his commission. Oh, what a good job, to be sure! Then to the Horse Guards, to thank dear Sir John Macdonald; then to Stable Yard, to call upon Lord Fitzroy Somerset; and then home, much happier than I had been for a long time.... Madame le Beau brought my dress for Louisa ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... not at all agree. The other was Lord Ellenborough, who was very able, and would certainly be very popular with the Army, but was very unmanageable; yet he hoped he could keep him in order. It might be doubtful whether Lord Hardinge could go on with him at the Horse Guards. We agreed in the danger of Lord Grey's Army proposal, and had to pronounce the opinion that Lord Ellenborough was almost mad. This led us to a long discussion upon the merits of the conduct of the war, upon which ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... archer, bowman. horse and foot; horse soldier; cavalry, horse, artillery, horse artillery, light horse, voltigeur[Fr], uhlan,mounted rifles, dragoon, hussar; light dragoon, heavy dragoon; heavy; cuirassier[Fr]; Foot Guards, Horse Guards. gunner, cannoneer, bombardier, artilleryman[obs3], matross[obs3]; sapper, sapper and miner; engineer; light infantry, rifles,chasseur[Fr], zouave; military train, coolie. army, corps d'armee[Fr], host, division, battalia[obs3], column, wing, detachment, garrison, flying column, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... the Gladiator originally stood (according to Ned Ward's London Spy) in the Parade facing the Horse Guards. Dodsley (Environs, iii. 741.) says it was removed by Queen Anne to Hampton Court, and from thence, by George the Fourth, to the private grounds of Windsor Castle, where it now is. Query, What has become of the other ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various

... please. When you address a gentleman of his Majesty's Horse Guards, be pleased not to ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Moses writes, "we had an excellent view of the company going to the palace, as well as of the Queen and her attendants in three royal carriages, escorted by a troop of Horse Guards. After ten o'clock dear Judith went to the palace in a sedan chair, and I walked there. There were many hundred carriages, and thousands of persons. The appearance of the rooms, galleries, and company ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... weighed me, and said I was fit. After that I was taken in to an officer—a real officer this time—who made me put my hand on a Bible and say yes to an oath he rattled off. Then he told me I was a member of the Royal Fusiliers, gave me two shillings, sixpence and ordered me to report at the Horse Guards Parade next day. I was in the British ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes

... the service rendered by Churchill to the Prince of Orange, immediately appeared in the commands conferred upon him. Hardly was he settled at William's headquarters when he was dispatched to London to assume the command of the Horse Guards; and, while there, he signed, on the 20th December 1688, the famous Act of Association in favour of the Prince of Orange. Shortly after, he was named lieutenant-general of the armies of William, and immediately made a new organization of the troops, under officers whom he could trust, which proved ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... A retired Lieutenant of the Horse Guards. Owner of more than 60,000 acres of land in various provinces. A fresh-looking, bland, agreeable gentleman of 60. Believes in Spiritualism, and likes to astonish ...
— Fruits of Culture • Leo Tolstoy

... there was a dim building, with two lofty square towers, decorated with a profusion of pointed Gothic pinnacles, that I looked at with more interest than these appendages of royalty. I could not linger long in its vicinity, but going back again by the Horse Guards, took the road to ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com